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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Shooting 24p RAW on a Canon 5D mark III

RAW video recording at 24fps 1080p with the Canon 5D mark III

Yesterday I came across some interesting news about the Canon 5D mark III. The Magic Lantern team announced the possibility to get an impressive 24 fps of continuous RAW video recording at 1080p out of the camera! That's right, the Canon 5D Mark II and 5D mark III can now have 2K RAW video capabilities. Cinema5D has tried it and says: "We tested it and it works, and the results are totally breathtaking and revolutionary".

Here's some amazing first footage filmed in RAW on the Canon 5d mark III

The code that makes it possible is still in the experimental phase and can cause random failures and lead to data loss and even crashing of your beloved camera. So please keep this in mind before attempting to get this Magic Lantern hack and 14bit RAW module working on your camera. Cinema5D posted a dummies guide online to get the firmware and RAW module onto the camera and the workflow to get usable Quicktime ProRes 4444 files for editing. But before you head over and start following the guide you should know that there's no guarantee that it will work for you and you will void your warranty for the camera and it might stop working afterwards!

Here's some comparison footage between the Canon 5D mark III with 14bit RAW 1080p together with the Blackmagic Cinema camera with 2.5K RAW.

I'm not really brave when it comes to altering camera's and taking a risk where I can end up having to say goodbye to expensive equipment, so I will be carefully monitoring the progress of this firmware. I can hardly wait for a stable version to be ready for real usage. This is a very interesting development and might end up in me getting a Canon 5D mark III.